Saturday, March 22, 2014

The Israeli army claimed it had discovered a highly sophisticated "terror" tunnel leading from Gaza into southern Israel on Friday, raising the possibility of further military operations against the coastal enclave just a week after an outbreak of violent clashes.

Military officials said the tunnel - dug more than 65 feet underground at its deepest point - was the largest and most advanced ever found and designed to smuggle Palestinian militants into Israel to carry out attacks against civilians or kidnap soldiers.

It was the fourth such tunnel to be found in the past 18 months following the discovery of three underground conduits in 2013, according to the Israeli military, which issued pictures and video footage to illustrate its latest find.

Two decades ago Israel erected a large steel and concrete barrier along its entire border with Gaza.

The discovery of the tunnel came a week after the most severe clashes between Israel and militant groups in the tiny coastal strip in 16 months. A wave of rocket attacks launched by Islamic Jihad and other groups into Israel was met by a series of Israeli strikes on militant targets before a reported ceasefire - said to have been brokered by Egypt - restored calm.

Note the use of quotations on terror, however, a telling sign of the journalist's apparent contempt.

It's good they found the tunnel, and now, I expect they'll be wrecking it so it'll no longer be usable.

According to the Tuskegee Institute figures, between the years 1882 and 1951, 4,730 people were lynched in the United States: 3,437 Negro and 1,293 white.3 The largest number of lynchings occurred in 1892. Of the 230 persons lynched that year, 161 were Negroes and sixty-nine whites.

“No one is more deserving of this honor than Leader Pelosi, who has fought tirelessly throughout her career to protect and expand women’s access to health care" - Cecile RichardsWASHINGTON, DC — Planned Parenthood Federation of America announced today that House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi will deliver remarks at the organization’s Annual Gala in Washington, DC, on March 27. Planned Parenthood is awarding Leader Pelosi the Margaret Sanger Award, the organization’s highest honor, in recognition of her leadership, excellence, and outstanding contributions to the reproductive health and rights movement over the course of her career.

The Left's desire to be associated with young, attractive and popular ACTORS and MUSICIANS -- (not the sharpest folks or most educated folks in the world, GENERALLY!) -- is a clever marketing TRICK.

And the Left uses the converse, too - caricaturing people on the right as dumb oafs: SNL's depiction of Palin, the entertainment industry's and MSM's depiction of Dubya, and Reagan before that.

The point being to reinforce the idea that leftness is smartness/chicness/COOLNESS and rightness is dumbness/oafishness.

The truth is the left-wing ideas have NOT helped humanity ANYWHERE as well as right-wing ideas have: China had 40 years of Mao-ness and it was an awful impoverished era; it only took 2 decades of A LITTLE rightness (a little free market capitalism) for China to go from starving poverty to fat affluence; 300 MILLION people were lifted pout of poverty by "right-wing" policies. Comparing North and South Korea leads to the same conclusion. Ditto East/commie Europe (from 1945-1989) and Western Europe. And everywhere else you want to compare: freer more 'right-wing" societies offer their people better living standards, longer healthier lives - AND MORE LIBERTY - it's a win-win-win! ((No coincidence here: prosperity is a by-product of liberty!)

All the chic and cool tools and toys of the modern world are the products of right-wing policies: compare Soviet cars to Detroit's of the same era; commies cars sucked; Detroit's were cool --- (and as bad as Detroit's were, they were better than Moscow's!).

4. “The definition of cool: popularity without achievement. It’s how President Obama got the youth vote. Ask any kid who voted for him, “Why did you do it?,” and the convoluted, wide-eyed answer will ultimately translate into: “He’s cool and that other guy wasn’t.” (Now they’re paying the brunt of Obamacare. Suckers.) The media pushed this to the hilt, and much of the public bought it. Hope and change is cool because it sounds cool, even if it’s undefined. An activist government is cool too, because giving stuff away is cool–especially when it’s other people’s stuff–and therefore perceived as philanthropic. But philanthropy without feeling the pain in your own wallet is super-easy to do, and about as cool as giving away your roommate’s food while he’s at work trying to pay for that food.”

7. “Fact is, the desperate desire to be cool has skewed our culture toward nihilism, carelessness, and ineptitude. It is now cool to be an idiot. A jackass. It’s cool to be a failure, as long as your failure is the basis for a reality show. And on the reality show you can do what’s considered ultimately cool: “raise awareness.” How else can you explain the Bravo network? It’s a machine devoted entirely to the adult tantrum.”

13. “[Robert] Redford’s maxim is reflexive and predictable: When any organization pits itself politically (or even violently) against the boring and mundane structures that hold society together, you simply root for those who wish to destroy it. It’s romantic, it’s cool, it makes you appear thoughtful. When, really, it just makes you banal. And brutal. You are just another useful idiot, a pawn for destructive forces.”

MY 3 POINTS:

TAB WAS WRITING ABOUT THE COOLNESS FACTOR AND LEFTIST POLITICS YEARS BEFORE GREG GUTFELD THOUGHT OF WRITING A BOOK ABOUT IT.

To the alarm of lawmakers and Pentagon officials, Putin has begun sending navy ships and long-range bombers to the region for the first time in years.Russia’s defense minister says the country is planning bases in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, and just last week, Putin’s national security team met to discuss increasing military ties in the region. “They’re on the march,” Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) said at a Senate hearing earlier this month. “They’re working the scenes where we can’t work. And they’re doing a pretty good job.”

AS OF 3/20, NOBODY MENTIONED PUTIN'S REACH OUTSIDE OF THE FORMER USSR SATELLITES CONTIGUOUS WITH RUSSIA.ON 3/20 I DID...AND ON 3/21 THE BIGGIES FOLLOW...

REGULAR READERS OF TAB KNOW WE SCOOP THE BIGGIES ALL THE TIME BECAUSE WE DON'T JUST FOLLOW THE HERD.

WE POST ORIGINAL ANALYSIS AND BLUNT COMMENTARY AHEAD OF THE COMMENTARIAT AND THE BIGGIES IN THE BLOGOSPHERE.

When Dominique Bons' timid son stopped smoking overnight and started praying frequently at his home in the southern French city of Toulouse, she alerted the authorities.

They did nothing because Nicolas was not suspected of any crime. One day last year he disappeared. Then Bons was sent a text message saying the 30-year-old had been "martyred" on December 22 driving a truck bomb in the Syrian city of Homs.

He grew up in a middle class suburb to atheist parents but converted to Islam in 2009. Like his younger half-brother who died in Syria months earlier, he joined the al Qaeda splinter group, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

They are among a growing number of people, an estimated 2,000 so far, who have left Europeans states to fight alongside Islamist rebels in Syria to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad. Europe's authorities are struggling to stem the flow.

Bons is angry that her efforts to alert the government to a potential problem were ignored and is also convinced that the strategy of France and other European countries of jailing those caught trying to get to Syria makes the situation worse.

"It's crazy," said Bons, a retired military secretary who has set up a support group for parents of children who have been radicalized. "In jail they will be reinforced in their desire to go back to Syria... It seems like they (the government) are doing whatever they can to ensure that this continues."

I think converts to Islam - and people born under the Religion of Peace, for that matter - should be sent to see psychologists. And parents have to do more to prevent their children from falling in with the wrong crowd.

— once and for all — that someone can be truly attracted to both a man and a woman.

I THINK THIS EFFORT/ANGLE REVEALS THAT A PUSH FOR POLYGAMY AND POLYAMORY IS NEXT ON THE POSTMODERN LEFTIST AGENDA.

POSTMODERNISTS ARE MORAL RELATIVISTS.

AND THEY LIVE IN A WORLD OF MORAL RELATIVISM: THEY FEEL THAT WHATEVER THEY THINK IS "RIGHT" IS RIGHT; "DO WHAT THOU WILT IS THE WHOLE OF THE LAW."

WHAT RESULTS IS LAWLESSNESS AND CHAOS - A LIFE-WORLD THAT RESEMBLES THE HORRORS OF A HIERONYMOUS BOSCH PAINTING.

MORAL ABSOLUTISTS OR UNIVERSALISTS BELIEVE THAT MORALITY IS ETERNAL AND TRANSCENDENT; THOUGH WE ARE NOT ABLE TO LIVE A LIFE THAT IS PERFECTLY OR EVEN CONSISTENTLY MORAL FROM A UNIVERSALIST POV - (YEA: WE ARE ALL SINNERS) - WE ENGAGE IN THE STRUGGLE.

AND WHEN WE FAIL, WE ASK FOR FORGIVENESS FROM G-D AND THOSE WE'VE OFFENDED.

BECAUSE THE POSTMODERNIST WORLD OFFERS NO BASIS FOR ERADICATING SLAVERY, SEXUAL EXPLOITATION, MISOGYNY OR RACISM, IT IS AMORAL - AT BEST.

Vladimir Putin insists Russia invaded Crimea to protect the ethnic Russians who live in that southern Ukrainian territory. Ukraine, the Russian president contends, has come under the control of "neo-Nazis and Nazis and anti-Semites," and the country's Russian population is under threat. It is easy to dismiss Putin's rhetoric -- he is, after all, a serial fibber and fabricator who conflates gays and pedophiles and heads a state where Cossacks gas and whip punk rockers in broad daylight.

But while Western governments and pundits are correct to dismiss Putin's pretenses for invading Ukraine, they are wrong to presume his Ukrainian opponents are necessarily in the right. The uncomfortable truth is that a sizeable portion of Kiev's current government -- and the protesters who brought it to power -- are, indeed, fascists.

If Western governments hope to steer Ukraine clear from the most unsavory characters in Moscow and Kiev, they will need to wage a two-pronged diplomatic offensive: against Putin's propaganda and, at the same time, against Ukraine's resurgent far-right.

Ukraine is home to Svoboda, arguably Europe's most influential far-right movement today. (In the photo above, Svoboda activists seize a Ministry of Agriculture building during Kiev's Euromaidan protests in January.) Party leader Oleh Tyahnybok is on record complaining that his country is controlled by a "Muscovite-Jewish mafia," while his deputy derided the Ukrainian-born film star Mila Kunis as a "dirty Jewess."

In Svoboda's eyes, gays are perverts and black people unfit to represent the nation at Eurovision, lest viewers come away thinking Ukraine is somewhere besides Uganda.

Svoboda began life in the mid-90s as the Social-National Party (a name deliberately redolent of the National Socialist Party, better known as Nazis), with its logo the fascist Wolfsangel. In 2004, the party gave itself an unobjectionable new name (Svoboda means "Freedom") and canned the Nazi imagery, and in the subsequent decade has seen its star swiftly rise.

Today, Svoboda holds a larger chunk of its nation's ministries (nearly a quarter, including the prized defense portfolio) than any other far-right party on the continent.

Ukraine's deputy prime minister represents Svoboda (the smaller, even more extreme "Right Sector" coalition fills the deputy National Security Council chair), as does the prosecutor general and the deputy chair of parliament -- where the party is the fourth-largest.

And Svoboda's fresh faces are scarcely different from the old: one of its freshmen members of parliament is the founder of the "Joseph Goebbels Political Research Centre" and has hailed the Holocaust as a "bright period" in human history.

While this article unfortunately has some biases of its own, including the PC insistence on calling these fascists "right-wing", the revelations of Svoboda's true image are still red flag raisers. Not that Russia is any better though, because they've been chummy with anti-semites and racists too.

Ukraine is a country badly in need of a good sanction themselves to send a message this is unacceptable. Why, what if someday they build up a significant Muslim population not unlike some of Russia's own sattelite countries? This is very bad.

WHAT IF THE INFO THE NSA GATHERS WITH OR WITHOUT FISA COURT CLEARANCE WERE TO BE DEEMED INADMISSIBLE FOR ANYTHING EXCEPT TERRORISM CHARGES, OR AS ACTIONABLE INTEL' FOR THE MILITARY - WOULD IT THEN BE, FAIAP, OKAY AND ACCEPTABLE?

Thursday, March 20, 2014

China’s yuan has suffered its biggest one-week fall in 20 years, nearing key trigger levels that threaten a wave of forced selling and mounting stress for those with dollar debts. The jitters come amid reports of fire-sales of Hong Kong property by Chinese investors desperate to raise cash, some slashing their prices by 20pc for a quick sale. A liquidity squeeze in mainland China has already led to the collapse of Zhejiang Xingrun real estate this week with $570m of debts, the biggest property failure so far.

The yuan weakened sharply on Thursday to 6.23 against the dollar and has now lost 3pc since January, a clear break with China’s long-standing policy of slow appreciation. Geoffrey Kendrick, from Morgan Stanley, said the currency has broken through the 6.20 level where a cluster of structured products are triggered. These are known as losses on target redemption funds. The losses have already hit $3.5bn.

The latest move creates a potential “non-linear movement” that could push the yuan rapidly to the next level at 6.38, where estimated losses would reach $7.5bn, and from there jump to 6.50.

I THINK THE RICH CHINESE ARE TAKING THEIR MONEY OUT OF CHINA AND BUYING USA EQUITIES AND THIS IS WHY OUR STOCK MARKETS ARE HIGHER THAN THEY SHOULD BE.

ULTIMATELY, IT WON'T HELP: WHEN CHINA'S REAL ESTATE BUBBLE BURSTS, IT WILL CAUSE A STAMPEDE IN THE USA, TOO -

At best, Obama created it as a naive act of goodwill. (In 2009, Obama canceled the tougher course Bush had put in place as a result of Putin's take-over of Ossetia and Abkhazia.)

Obama entreaties to Iran will have the same effect.

Obama's acts are nothing more than appeasement, and appeasement of our foes always results in adventurism by our foes.

We can expect more gambits from Putin - and soon from Iran, and China and North Korea and Syria and Lebanon - until the USA and the West make some credible counter-moves - and that means doing something much more substantial than enacting sanctions of any kind, targeted or blanket.

We don't have to go kinetic - yet. We do have to improve our ability to do so, and that means deploying defensive and offensive weapons in a way that more effectively focuses them on Russia (which means undoing Obama's Russian Reset).

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

On Monday, Governor Mitt Romney published an article in the Wall Street Journal, which was titled "The Price of Failed Leadership." He described several examples of how the President's poor timing resulted in poor outcomes for the United States, and concluded:

Able leaders anticipate events, prepare for them, and act in time to shape them. My career in business and politics has exposed me to scores of people in leadership positions, only a few of whom actually have these qualities. Some simply cannot envision the future and are thus unpleasantly surprised when it arrives. Some simply hope for the best. Others succumb to analysis paralysis, weighing trends and forecasts and choices beyond the time of opportunity.

President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton traveled the world in pursuit of their promise to reset relations and to build friendships across the globe. Their failure has been painfully evident: It is hard to name even a single country that has more respect and admiration for America today than when President Obama took office, and now Russia is in Ukraine. Part of their failure, I submit, is due to their failure to act when action was possible, and needed.

The "twitchy" site has recorded a large number of "tweets," in which members of the Obamaholic community responded, mainly by demanding that Governor Romney provide specific actions that would now remedy the disasters that Obama's incompetence has produced. The post is called, "Lapdogs, unite! Obama’s ‘team of merry manchildren’ mocks Romney Russia op-ed."

Obama's manchildren are in fact missing the point. Governor Romney pointed out a number of things that could have been done - at the right time - to avert some of these problems.

But the problem is not really one of specific mistakes or missteps. The problem with the Obama maladministration's foreign policy is that it is a series of repeated mistakes that as a whole have conveyed the message that America is a weak, ineffectual, helpless country, and that no antagonistic power in the world, whether great or small, need be at all concerned about any consequences that might follow their misbehavior.

At this point, specific other things that Obama might do to contain an awakening Russian giant are not really the issue. Behind whatever moves Obama might take, the world perceives a weak and cowardly appeaser. That is the problem. And of course the reason that the world perceives that Obama is weak and cowardly, is that his actions are repeatedly weak and cowardly.

Unless of course you are beginning to think that everything Obama does is intentionally designed to weaken America and strengthen communist and jihadist tyrannies around the world. In which case, what he is doing as President of the United States - hollowing out the armed forces, cashiering our most experienced and successful combat commanders, kowtowing to Iran, Russia, China, and Al Qaeda, crippling the American economy - is actually rather bold.

The Guatemalan court reportedly didn’t find sufficient evidence was presented by Canadian authorities to proceed with a removal order. The judge let the group keep their passports and requested the family visit the Canadian embassy within three days of the ruling. RCMP referred Interpol Canada requests to Guatemalan officials, who declined comment Friday. A Canadian Foreign Affairs spokesperson referred a Global News request regarding consular involvement to Doig.

This is sad the court in the Central American country isn't helping much, and if they're allowed to keep their passports, they could go on the lam again, and this time, what if they managed to make their way to an Islamic country, where the women would be considered suited to their mindset?

Earlier this week, members of the ultra-orthodox Jewish sect used an attorney said to be one of the highest-priced in the area to fight for the chance to keep their children and stay in the country.

With the money they no doubt undeservedly got from donations that should not have been made, among other shady dealings. As I guessed, they would exploit legal systems in their efforts to defy justice, and that's shameful.

Nicholas Bala, a Queen’s University law professor who specializes in children’s law, said the Lev Tahor case is moving relatively quickly, saying Hague Convention cases in Canada can drag on for months, if not years.

He said it’s clear the judge in Guatemala found he did not have all the necessary information to make a decision Monday. He said it’s highly unlikely the family will get paperwork from the embassy allowing them to stay in the country.

“In fact, the embassy is going to provide contrary evidence, because presumably, the embassy has been on top of this,” he said.

Bala said it is a concern that the Lev Tahor members were allowed to keep their passports, given their past history of fleeing jurisdictions before court dates, but said it makes sense to allow the children to remain with their parents for now.

“Removing the children immediately from their parental care can be very intrusive,” he said. “Who would look after them? They don’t speak Spanish. It’s unlikely someone can be found quickly to care for them, other than their parents.”

Unfortunately, that's still taking a risk. What if the parents are abusive to the children during their stay in Guatemala? In which case, a translator should be found, either in Guatemala or from Canada, or even Israel, which should be involved in this affair too.

JERUSALEM — Israeli warplanes attacked Syrian military positions on Wednesday in retaliation for a bombing the previous day, in the most serious confrontation between the two foes since the Syrian conflict erupted three years ago.

Syria said one of its soldiers was killed and seven were injured when three army positions near the town of Quneitra were struck on the Syrian side of the ceasefire line between the two countries in the Golan Heights.

Israel said the targets were an army training facility, a military headquarters and an artillery battery, and that the raids came in response to a bombing along the line on Tuesday that injured four Israeli soldiers.

If Syria's attempting to win favor with jihadists by attacking Israelis, this is what they deserve.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

SEND MISSILE DEFENSES TO THE NATIONS WHICH WERE SUPPOSED TO GET THEM BEFORE OBAMA CANCELED BUSH'S DEALS: NYTIMES/2009:

In one of the biggest national security reversals of his young presidency, Mr. Obama canceled former President George W. Bush’s plans to station a radar facility in the Czech Republic and 10 ground-based interceptors in Poland.

Conflict between Baghdad and Iraqi Kurdistan over oil exports has resulted in something of a financial crisis in the northern region. State employees haven’t been paid, MPs are threatening to resign and there are rumours that Turkey was asked for a loan. Negotiations are continuing but some senior politicians are saying that Iraqi Kurdistan is ready for financial independence if a compromise is not reached soon.

Monday, March 17, 2014

“Immigrants devoted to their own cultures and religions are not influenced by the secular politically correct fasade that dominates academia, news-media, entertainment, education, religious and political thinking today,” said James Walsh, former Associate General Counsel of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service. “They claim the right not to assimilate, and the day is coming when the question will be how can the United States regulate the defiantly unassimilated cultures, religions and mores of foreign lands? Such immigrants say their traditions trump the U.S. legal system. Balkanization of the United States has begun.”

Walsh made that statement 20 years ago. He saw it coming. No one responded. Only 100,000 Muslims inhabited America in 1990. Today, over 7,000,000 (million) Muslims in America continue their onslaught to change our country into their country. [...]

Sharia compliant squads grow in America:

Detroit, Michigan houses over 400,000 Muslims in 2014. During the public comment time at the Dearborn, Michigan city council meeting this month, a Muslim stood to demand that the city institute Sharia patrols to keep young people out of parks and to prevent the sale of “offensive” magazines in stores.

Mr. Hassan took his place in line during the public comments and chanted Islamic prayers. He demanded that the city begin patrols of the parks because people used them for “sexual activities.” (Example: kissing)

As reported, “Hassan also stated that there were magazines and newspapers at the public libraries and civic center that can cause colossal damage to a child’s health, asking the city to review and monitor literature before they are distributed.”

Mr. Hassan demanded Sharia compliant patrols to prevent people from using parks and he wants the city to perpetrate Sharia compliant censorship at libraries.

He wants Americans to suspend their First Amendment rights in order to engage his “Sharia Law” from his native Saudi Arabia, one of the most brutal dictatorships of the Middle East. What he escaped in his own country, he wants instituted in our country.

This could only have been expected, as the USA loses its beliefs and morals to the tragedy of multiculturalism, and it took place right in the neighborhood once dominated by bigoted socialist Henry Ford. And who knows if there'll be any opposition to this horror?

Steven Plaut wrote about Kerry's repeated disinterest in the PLO's refusal to recognize Israel's legitimacy, including:

Moreover, Kerry has a new invention. He claims that Yassir Arafat actually recognized Israel twice as a Jewish state. He found evidence of these in old video clips. Well, evidently no one bothered to let Arafat know that he had done so. Let us recall that Arafat never changed the “Palestinian Covenant” that demanded that all of Israel be exterminated.

Kerry is simply deconstructing some old speeches of Arafat and twisting the words to make it appear like Arafat recognized Israel. No doubt he found something like Arafat saying that all the people in the Jewish state need to be thrown into the sea, and Kerry understands from this that Arafat “recognized the Jewish state.”

Now if indeed Arafat really HAD recognized Israel as a legitimate Jewish state, then there would be no reason whatsoever for Israel to make concessions and abandon the demand that Abu Mazen and his horde also recognize Israel as a legitimate Jewish state. If Arafat has already recognized Israel, what does the Palestinian Authority lose from doing the same? Let Abu Mazen proclaim three times a day that not only is Israel a Jewish state but it is legitimate that Israel be a Jewish state. If he were to do so, surely the Israeli electorate would then be happy to conduct negotiations and make more concessions.

No, I think not. Furthermore, Abbas is such a repulsive creature already, and not someone any sane person should make strange bedfellows with.